to enjoy hearing Paula Vennels being taken apart?

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Is anyone else listening - radio 5 at the moment. Paula Vennels being slowly picked apart by an expert?

Yes, so you would have thought someone in accounts would have looked at this extra money and wondered if there was a connection, given that the sub postmasters were paying money back using their pensions, homes, savings. Not just thought, oh, there is all this surprise money, lets just not check the books.

They knew!!! The issue is they didn't persuade the senior leadership!!! They decided to cover it up. That's what this Inquiry is about.

It's pretty spectacular how yer man is keeping his composure and hasn't flung something at him tbh! He deserves an award of some sort.

No you aren't, and the KC has already made the excellent point that Vennels' unreliable memory, lack of documentation and involvement is weirdly selective, as it appears to be limited to anything that might point a finger at her in any way.

*her!

They knew!!! The issue is they didn't persuade the senior leadership!!! They decided to cover it up. That's what this Inquiry is about.

Perhaps someone will ask Paula Vennells what she thinks her job was. The senior leadership should have got wind of something being wrong and investigated; they should remember that the buck stopped with them. Not that their role was to feather their nests which seems to be what they think it was.

Who pays for this enquiry? The fabulous Jason beer won’t be cheap. I’ve also noted Paula venells being represented by the same chambers.

The post office system was going to be incredibly complex and it would always bring up the occasional ad hoc issues they hadn’t considered.
But what the hell did Fujitsu think fixing accounts would do further down the line? It’s such a rookie error to think one thing doesn’t affect another, you learn that very quickly in admin basics

She thought her job was to cruise into retirement with a nice pension and perhaps go for a bishopric or a nice parish priest's job in the cotswolds.

Who pays for this enquiry?

I imagine the taxpayer is - but these people ought to have their assets sequestered so that at least some money is recouped.

Yeah all I hear is I don’t recall

The YouTube live stream is a good way to follow this:

Especially because you can start watching from earlier on and have a fast playback speed to get up to date. x1.25 or even x1.5 are both comfortable to watch because the people in the hearing have to speak slowly to not overwhelm the stenographer.

The post office system was going to be incredibly complex and it would always bring up the occasional ad hoc issues they hadn’t considered.

Was it? Many of their transactions are selling things and there are plenty of accounting systems which deal with these. Similarly they also had a banking function, but again this is inputs and outputs, so ought not to have been too complex.

It must require a lot of patience. It’s like watching someone chisel stone with a teaspoon. He’s chipping away at her credibility fragment by fragment, question by question.

Though it was more like a JCB with Jarnail Singh.

This is the part which baffled me - postmasters and postmistresses who had been honestly running their businesses for a number of years suddenly all turn into crooks? It's not very likely - the first question should have been "What's changed?" "It's the IT system, we need to look at that."

My understanding also is that the PO management charmingly believed that their hardworking and loyal postmasters and -mistresses were all itching to get their hands in the till but they never had proof. Horizon was seen as a way of confirming this previously-held suspicion and so they began from a position of believing that the victims of this horrendous miscarriage of justice weren’t honest to start with. It’s truly incredible and an indictment of what a rotten organisation it was.

He's so patient. There was a time maybe about an hour ago where he was struggling to contain his incredulity, but other than that so calm. I can't see her fessing up to anything no matter what tone is taken though, with her convenient swiss cheese memory 🙄

I think this is it - the top brass all thought the PMs were thieving scum and would be caught out by Horizon, when in fact it turns out the top brass were the thieving scum.

This is the part which baffled me - postmasters and postmistresses who had been honestly running their businesses for a number of years suddenly all turn into crooks? It's not very likely - the first question should have been "What's changed?" "It's the IT system, we need to look at that.

Absolutely.

when in fact it turns out the top brass were the thieving scum.

And I am now beginning to think that all the supposedly higher echelons of society are thieving scum and operate with slush funds and dodgy accounts so no one questioned because it was how they all are.

It would be, if you think of all the separate functions of the post office, the government departments they all fed into to. The differing vat amounts for different transactions for instance. Dealing with government transactions such as child benefit, pensions and the reporting requirements relating to that. The vehicle taxation is another one that’s complex, and a two day course on its own.
passport transactions. Then there’s the bureau de change.
it’s really not a straightforward booking keeping job

The problem is that the PO had created an inbuilt incentive not to express curiosity over the additional money floating around, as senior management - including PV - got their inflated bonuses due to "creating" extra profits

Post office staff should be some of the most trusted given the things they deal with, banking, benefits, passports, vehicle taxation. These are things that underpin our society in every way, and certainly in the early 2000’s these were the people the government used and trusted to check and provide all those things

This brings me back to thinking certain things shouldn’t be profit making, essential services and utilities

My experience is that (some?) IT companies have their eye on the bottom dollar and organisations like the Post Office purchase systems based on a sales pitch. Once the system is in, all the problems start and then the tussle between them begins. For example, the IT company will start demanding extra money to fix the glitches, the organisation will push back, and a disinterested software engineer will be assigned to carry out minimum work just to shut them up.

Usually the higher ups are oblivious to all this.

The absolute scandal of this case is that once the higher ups woke up to what was going on and the tragedies began, they embarked on a massive arse covering exercise instead of calling a halt on all prosecutions while a proper investigation was carried out.